1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to apparatus and methods for an individual user auctioning his/her time and desktop space to product and service suppliers. More particularly, the present invention provides apparatus and methods for obtaining bids from various product and service suppliers, determining which of the bids are the highest ranking bids, and presenting commercial information from the product and/or service suppliers in accordance with the ranking of the bids.
2. Description of Related Art
Various mechanisms have been devised for determining which advertisements and commercial information to be presented to a user on his/her client device. These mechanisms typically involve determining an advertisement to be displayed, such as a banner advertisement, based on user preferences stored, for example, in a user profile file. Based on the user profile, an advertisement meeting the interests of the user, as defined in the user profile, is selected and displayed to the user via the client device.
However, there is no mechanism by which a plurality of advertisements, or other commercial information, may be evaluated as to the commercial benefit being offered to the user. Moreover, a user does not directly participate in the selection of advertisements to filter out unwanted information, e.g., oil change advertising to a person who does not own a car. Furthermore, there is no mechanism by which the amount of space on the client device, e.g., visual space on the display, airtime on the cellular phone, or time duration of presentation of the commercial information may be dynamically determined. Rather, known systems present the selected advertisement constantly until the user selects a new display, e.g., a new web page, or cycle the advertisements at a predetermined cycle time.
Thus, it would be beneficial to have an apparatus and method for auctioning time and space allocations on a client output device to providers of commercial information.